Maplewood Creative Design

What are those funny barcodes anyway?

April 13, 2011

The world of print advertising is changing, and we should all get ready to change with it! The newest rage, and yes Maplewood Creative Design offers these as part of our advertising solutions, are those weird barcodes that you see in all of the magazines and many print ad's today.

For a little texture around today's subject, I just upgraded my BlackBerry to one with a camera. I had a corporate edition before without a camera, but living without a charging port for over a year got frustrating and I decided that I wanted a camera on my phone just like everyone else has. It just so happens that right around the same time as my phone upgrade I decided to perform my geekly duties and started reading my Wired magazine. The first thing I noticed was this weird looking barcode that I kept seeing everywhere. Well, that's actually the second thing, the first thing I noticed was that I could design and have a 3D object "printed" in the Netherlands and make cool little toys for cheap. Back to the weird barcode... Kirsten kept telling me that she needed an upgraded phone so she could check out the special offers that her magazines offered (not Wired) and that she needed a camera on her phone to do this (she got her upgrade two weeks before I got mine). This new revelation that I can now compute and read a magazine at the same time was just overwhelming, I immediately had to start testing this newfound technology. After snapping away at the barcodes and steadily filling up my phone's memory I became dissapointed, I now had quite a few pictures of this technology and no geekly reward for the pictues. Enter computer from stage left, Google enters stage right, query enters from above: what are these things, why are they there, and most importantly, why aren't they working for me? It turns out that with my BlackBerry I had to download an app (I downloaded three to make sure that I had one that would work to my satisfaction), and voila, first scan and I was off to the races. I picked up every magazine I could find in the office and started scanning away at every code I could find! There were some horrible sites that I went to, and then there were those that knew this was their opportunity to sell and they made great mobile ready sites for users like you and me.

At this point, you are probably wondering about the 3D toys that you can buy, but I will get to that in a bit... Right now let's focus on you for a minute. You need QR Codes or Microsoft Tags, not only do you need these, it is imperative that if you have any print ads you are about to send out that you stop production and add one of these barcodes to it. This may sound a bit extreme, but let's look at what you will gain from doing this:

1. People like me will have to scan the code to see where it takes them (it should take them right to your core business and sell them in 10 seconds or less)
2. You will be able to represent your company as being progressive and keeping up with the times
3. You will be more likely to sell an impulse buy product or service to the younger generation (with the right marketing techniques in play)
4. You will be able to track the efficacy of your advertising. Sites like Google Analytics can easily help you track clicks from these codes (if you don't have Analytics, get it now)

These codes are easily produced online (just google QR Codes) and you can set the website that you want the code to take the user to, you can also set it to call a number, send an email, or just present the scanner with text. Not only will you drive business to your website, telephone, or email account, but again you will be on the leading edge of this free technology that is extremely simple to use and implement.

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Freelancing

A Journey Across the WorldApril 04, 2011In an effort to gain more exposure, increase my client base and frankly make some more money, I recently decided to enter the world wide web of freelancing. I love doing what I do with computers, I love my "day job" too, but the design and programming aspect of Maplewood Creative Design gives me an outlet to free my creative mathematically minded side.

Enter freelancing... I have discovered a lot about not only myself, but the world in general through this exercise. Though I have some promising leads on the freelancing sites that I have joined - www.ScriptLance.com, www.Guru.com, and www.Freelancer.com to name a few, I have also discovered why people get so frustrated with "computer people" in general. Just as an example, most of these site post budgets for projects that they feel should sufficiently cover the work they are posting to be completed. I saw a project just last night with a $2,000 - $3,000 budget. Reading over the description for the project I thought that a good price for the project would be closer to $1,500 and was about to bid on the project but noticed that there were already over 40 bids listed. This piqued my curiosity a bit as to how close I was to everyone else's pricing, so I looked. It turns out that in Iran, India, and the Netherlands they can complete around 20 - 25 hours of work (based on my estimate of the project) for $10. You read that right, TEN dollars! Others who boasted and I quote "I have much experience, let's get started" were more towards the $20 range. Other programmers that I assume are much like me had more realistic prices ranging from $1,750 - $4,500 (though I think $4,500 would be required if you had to train someone how to do the job!). This is why people get so frustrated! I decided not to bid on the project as I would have to then explain to the prospective client why $1,500 was more appropriate than $10, $20, or even $50. And quite frankly at the end of the day, they are probably going to go with a bid in the $50 range, and if they're lucky only lose that money. The frustration level will build, and then they won't go back to a freelancing website because of how they feel they were treated in the past by "programmers".

So the question I pose to you is this, what is a good programmer, designer, computer genius [note the creative license taken there] to do in these days of scammers that want someone to accept a bid of $10, take the money on deposit (forgot to mention that most of the bidders want payment up front) and then don't provide the service?

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